You Only Love Once. Tori Carrington

work at a nearby factory, had stopped by to see his daughter, his soon-to-be ex refused to allow him to, and he’d taken matters into his own hands.

      Any way you cut it, what had begun as a harmless domestic squabble had spiraled out of control until you had the situation he now faced.

      “I’ve got a clean shot,” a sharpshooter’s voice crackled over the radio fastened to David’s gun belt.

      “Be at the ready,” scene commander Sutherland’s voice responded.

      Shaking his head, David reached over and tested the old wood-frame window. Unlocked. Hoping the bit of luck would stay with him, he pushed the window up before the guy inside, and the commander outside, had time to react.

      “Whoa, there, cowboy,” David said, swinging his feet over the sill and sitting with his hands up. “My name’s McCoy and I’m here to make sure no one gets hurt.” He grinned. “Especially me.”

      OFFICERS, uniformed and otherwise swarmed the small, neat apartment, talking into radios, issuing orders and generally making a mess out of things. In the middle of the chaos, Kelli finished reading the perp his Miranda rights, then cuffed him. Distractedly, her gaze trailed over to where David stood near the door holding the little girl. She clung to him like a young chimp. He leaned in and whispered something into her ear, then chucked her under her dimpled chin. She twirled her blond, sleep-tousled hair around her chubby index finger, then giggled shyly. Somehow, David had not only skillfully managed to keep the girl from seeing her father being arrested, he had made her laugh. Kelli couldn’t help noticing how…right he looked holding the little cherub.

      Testing the cuffs, she forced the unwanted thought aside and concentrated instead on her total lack of amusement only moments before. David’s sending her off on some two-bit, phony errand so that he could play maverick hero set her blood to simmering.

      “This way,” she said, grasping the perp’s elbow, then angling him toward the door.

      He hesitated. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I just wanted my face to be one of the first she saw this morning, that’s all,” he told her. “It’s her birthday, you know. All I wanted was five minutes to give her a hug and her present. I would never have hurt my little girl.”

      Kelli took in his aggrieved expression. “I hope not. But that’s for a judge to decide, isn’t it?”

      David handed the child off to another female officer who would likely take the toddler to her mother and Kelli passed the handcuffed perp off to the first officer on the scene.

      “That was a stupid stunt you pulled, David,” Kelli muttered as they walked out of the apartment together.

      “Just so long as it’s over and no one got hurt.” He acknowledged a hearty slap on the back from one of their colleagues with a nod. He flashed a loaded grin at her. “I didn’t know you were so concerned about my backside.”

      “I’m your partner,” she said, her breath catching at the teasing expression on his face. “I’m supposed to be concerned about your backside. But that’s not what I was talking about. I didn’t much care for your little diversionary tactic, David. Do you even know the definition of the word partn—”

      “McCoy! Get your ass over here now, boy,” Sutherland’s voice boomed up the stairwell.

      “Speaking of backsides…” David groaned. “I’d better go see what he wants.”

      Kelli opened her mouth, then snapped it closed again. She got the impression that whatever she had to say wouldn’t make one iota of difference anyway.

      She stopped and let him pass in front of her. “Go ahead. I just might enjoy watching the scene commander take a piece out of you.”

      David’s grimace was altogether too cute. “Be careful what you wish for, Hatfield. At this rate, I won’t have any behind left to risk.” He waggled his brows.

      Sutherland was at the bottom of the steps and was apparently ready to do just as David forecasted. Even so, Kelli couldn’t help eyeing the backside in question. The clinging, unattractive material and bulky weapons belt was unable to hide the fact that David McCoy’s behind was the stuff of which fantasies were made. She started to push wisps of hair from her forehead only to find her hand shaking. She greeted an officer, then outside on the street away from the crowd she took a deep, calming breath.

      Why did she get the feeling that everything in her life had just been turned upside down? And why was it that she suspected that a certain precinct Casanova named David McCoy was solely to blame?

      3

      THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Kelli caught herself daydreaming as she stood in front of the toaster. She’d been thinking about David in a way that had nothing to do with the way he’d treated her yesterday, nothing to do with her plans to nab a detective’s shield, and everything to do with hot flesh and cool sheets.

      Sighing in a mixture of wistfulness and frustration, she pushed her run-dampened hair from her cheek, then stuck half an onion bagel smothered with grape jelly between her teeth. Ignoring the dirty dishes stacked in the sink, and the empty carton of orange juice on the counter, she clutched her full coffee cup, then elbowed open the kitchen door. She had forty-five minutes before roll call. Plenty of time to peel off her sweats, catch a shower and get down to the district three station to have that little talk she and David had never really gotten around to yesterday.

      The tension she had just spent a half an hour and three miles running off settled solidly back between her shoulder blades.

      After the hostage case and Sutherland, there had been the press to deal with. She remembered how David’s easy grin and easygoing personality had transferred well over all forms of media and felt her stomach tighten along with her shoulders. Reporters, especially female—although she’d noticed a couple of males responding to David’s charming, daredevil ways—were all over him. When they’d finally gotten back to their squad car, it seemed a quarter of D.C.’s population had a crisis of some sort that needed attention. She and David had spent the day on back-to-back runs ranging from the simple—helping find an elderly woman’s “stolen” social security check in a neighbor’s mailbox—to the complicated—an obvious gang member who would probably lose an eye but would never give up the names of his homies or the opposing gang.

      Still, no matter how many calls came in, how much paperwork they had to fill out, a thread of awareness had bound her and David together. It was a connection not even her sharpest retort could hope to cut.

      Yeah, well, today she planned to take a machete to work. She’d get a handle on her runaway hormones if it was the last thing she ever did.

      Kelli wove her way through the maze that was currently her apartment into the dining area of her living room. She dodged precariously stacked, half-unpacked boxes, a hundred pound bag of diet dog food and her treadmill. Finally she nudged a manila folder aside with her mug, then put her coffee on the cluttered dining room table. Her attention catching on a pink message slip, she freed the bagel from between her teeth and took an absent bite. The message must have slipped from one of the files, the blue ink nearly faded. She leaned closer to see the date. March 25, 1982. The day her mother was murdered. The day she’d decided she wanted to be a homicide detective.

      A sharp bark made her jump.

      “Yikes, Kojak, you just about gave me a coronary.” Frowning down at the drooling blond boxer she’d rescued from a New York animal shelter, she considered the disgusting concoction that served as her breakfast then held it out to him. He sniffed, licked, then whined and walked away.

      Kelli stared at the now inedible bagel half. “Thanks a lot.” She tossed it into a nearby bag she hoped was empty, then switched on the television across the room with the remote. The local news broadcaster’s voice filled the apartment reminding her again how David had charmed the reporters. His too handsome mug had been plastered all over the news last night, every hour on the hour, if not on the news itself, then in the news previews. “You don’t